Our judges have eval­u­ated sub­mis­sions for orig­i­nal­ity, in­no­va­tion, per­for­mance, and value, and se­lected one win­ner in each cat­e­gory

The modern mar­ket for mem­brane fil­tra­tion in wa­ter treat­ment cel­e­brates its 20th an­niver­sary this year. We take a look at the lat­est tech­ni­cal and mar­ket de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing the ‘Open Plat­form’ con­cept.

Be­cause of the changes in cus­tomer de­mand, be­ing a lead­ing in­no­va­tor is a much more com­pelling strat­egy than it used to be in the util­i­ties sec­tor. Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies are evolv­ing, and cus­tomers are quick to adopt them. Both busi­ness and con­sumer en­ergy users are clear about their ex­pec­ta­tions. They want to re­duce their con­sump­tion, and they know that tech­no­log­i­cal con­trols and data an­a­lyt­ics can help them do it.

Busi­ness cus­tomers are in­creas­ingly in­ter­ested in man­ag­ing their en­ergy use pat­terns. Man­u­fac­tur­ers and in­dus­trial firms are mon­i­tor­ing heat­ing and cool­ing equip­ment per­for­mance with in­tel­li­gent sen­sors that can in­di­cate mal­func­tions, an­tic­i­pate and pre­vent dis­tur­bances, or sig­nal when ma­jor main­te­nance is needed.

Own­ers of com­mer­cial build­ings are in­stalling en­ergy mon­i­tors to help gauge vari­a­tions in con­sump­tion and pre­dict fu­ture en­ergy re­quire­ments. Many well-known com­pa­nies have an­nounced en­ergy ef­fi­ciency tar­gets for 2020.

Com­pa­nies pur­su­ing en­ergy ef­fi­ciency have two long-stand­ing goals — gain­ing a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage and boost­ing the bot­tom line — and one rel­a­tively new one: en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity. Dubai head­quar­tered Emi­rates Na­tional Oil Com­pany (ENOC) has, for in­stance, in­di­cated that it plans to have all its ser­vice sta­tions run­ning on re­new­able en­ergy in the near fu­ture.

Sev­eral other com­pa­nies in the GCC have en­listed the ser­vices of En­ergy Ser­vice Com­pa­nies (ESCOs) to help them meet their ef­fi­ciency tar­gets. Even if these goals change be­fore they are reached, they will af­fect busi­ness power us­age in the short term, demon­strat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant shift to­ward re­new­ables.

Prod­ucts such as the JinkoSo­lar’s 410W Chee­tah mod­ule, an­nounced last year, are rein­vent­ing the mar­ket stan­dard for high per­for­mance in so­lar. Jinko’s 410 W Chee­tah mod­ule is one of the world’s high­est­per­form­ing com­mer­cially mass-pro­duced mono-fa­cial mod­ules, bring­ing the in­dus­try into the new age of PV 4.0 with main­stream mod­ule out­put of over 400 W.

The mod­ule is de­signed to meet the needs of the ul­tra-high per­for­mance mar­ket seg­ments, such as the likes of China’s “Su­per Top Run­ner Pro­gram”.

“In­dus­try trans­for­ma­tion, con­tin­ued tech­nol­ogy evo­lu­tion, and in­creas­ingly com­plex mar­ket de­mands are all ob­sta­cles we must over­come to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of the PV in­dus­try,” says Gul­nara Ab­dul­lina, gen­eral man­ager, JinkoSo­lar Mid­dle East and Africa.

Power com­pa­nies across the sec­tor recog­nise that their cus­tomers ex­pect them to in­no­vate, just as other ser­vice providers do, and the old in­dus­try bound­aries seem much less rel­e­vant.

Last year, GE launched the GE Reser­voir, a com­pre­hen­sive en­ergy stor­age plat­form that de­liv­ers a suite of cus­tomised stor­age so­lu­tions to help cus­tomers ad­dress new chal­lenges and seek new op­por­tu­ni­ties in a rapidly trans­form­ing power grid that is be­com­ing more highly di­ver­si­fied and dis­trib­uted.

The Reser­voir, which al­ready has a 20MW, 80 MWh pre-launch com­mit­ment, ex­pands GE’s 10-year foot­print in the en­ergy stor­age space and builds upon re­cent suc­cesses and mile­stones.

Both JinkoSo­lar’s 410W chee­tah and the GE Reser­voir have made it to the list of the top util­i­ties prod­ucts of 2018.

The Prod­ucts Awards con­sists of six cat­e­gories. These are: So­lar, Wa­ter Pumps, En­ergy Stor­age, Fil­tra­tion, Elec­tri­cal Test­ing, and Power Ca­bles. The best prod­ucts were se­lected af­ter hours of care­ful de­lib­er­a­tion over dozens of en­tries for our first ever Prod­ucts Awards.

Our es­teemed team of judges eval­u­ated sub­mis­sions for orig­i­nal­ity, in­no­va­tion, per­for­mance, and value, and se­lected one win­ner in each cat­e­gory as shown out in the next two pages. Util­i­ties Mid­dle East would like to con­grat­u­late all the win­ners.